The Rise of A.I.

You, awesome HR professional, probably think that robots are pretty far removed from your day-to-day existence. You probably think that there is no possible way you could ever be replaced by a robot. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s role as Terminator probably confirmed for you that robots may be soldiers one day but can never walk a manager through an employee relations issue.

I’m not so sure. I’ve spent the last month reviewing artificial intelligence and the technology is scary good.

Waiters, customer service and chess are not HR jobs. The jobs most typically affected are in old industries and fields like manufacturing, print newspaper, CD’s, etc; In many cases, technology actually helpsoffice workers like ourselves become more efficient (ATS system? Goodbye tracking resumes in huge paper files).

So technology is great for us. I love that I can ask Siri to start a movie or what song is playing and if there is a chance of snow this week. It’s all good…until it starts to learn how to interact on an emotional level.

Seeing the evolution of robotics, McKinsey conducted a study which “found that 45% of work activities representing $2 trillion in wages can already [be] automated based on proven technology that currently exists.” Further analysis found that an additional 13% of work activities “could be automated if the technologies used to understand and process human language were brought up to the median human level of competence.”